Metadata is essential for:
- make it easier to find software,
- describe it in a controlled way.
In addition to the metadata specific to the discipline concerned by the code, there are metadata schemas dedicated to the software:
- Citation File Format (CFF) : is a format for providing citation metadata for software, implemented in YAML.
- Fichier schema.org : general metadata schema. These files are commonly used in HTML to provide metadata that is reused by search engines.
- Fichier CodeMeta : is a format for generic software metadata, implemented in JSON-LD, which extends schema.org files. It is used to provide comprehensive information about software, with a focus on academic use cases.
There is an online tool that makes it easy to create a codemeta.json file.
Software Heritage uses the CodeMeta vocabulary.